IELTS Academic Essay 17th Sept 2020

Today, many children spend a lot of time playing computer games and less time on sports. Why? Is it a positive or negative development?

Checkout more IELTS academic essays here.

Today’s children are different from the children of previous generations. They are more interested in playing video games and sitting hours on the play-stations than in playing outdoor games. This essay intends to analyze the reasons for this phenomenon. In my opinion, this is detrimental to children.

The main reason why children spend more time on electronic games is that these electronic games are very addicting. It is very hard for children to stop playing. In comparison, while playing sports children naturally get tired after some time and stop. Parents also, prefer their children to play video games because they don’t have to supervise them constantly. For sports, parents have to drive their children to parks and keep an eye on them.

There are several drawbacks of this addiction towards video games. The first disadvantage is that these games are isolating, as these are usually played alone. In contrast, outdoor games teach children to socialize and make friends. This manifests in isolation and anxiety, which sometimes leads to severe mental problems like depression. Secondly, this has an effect on their physical health. This sedentary lifestyle is leading to many problems like obesity, diabetes and so on among children. A majority of children have to start wearing spectacles at an early age for the same reason.

Finally, playing video games continuously especially with violence is believed to lead to an increase in aggressive behavior. Children find it hard to differentiate between the real world and the virtual world of games and children sometimes end up immersing themselves so much into this make-belief world that they ignore their parents and siblings. No doubt, this also has a negative impact on their education.

To sum up, there are many reasons why children would prefer spending time on video games instead of sports and other outdoor activities, and it is indubitably a negative development.